This year for Thanksgiving I was supposed to go up north to see my family. Mother Nature had other ideas; while the weather in this area wasn't supposed to be too bad, my parents' place was predicted to get dumped on (which is what happened). Wednesday afternoon Shawn invited me to have Thanksgiving at her place, in leiu of risking my life driving through a blizzard for turkey and pie. I happily accepted the offer, and decided to drive up to see my family on Friday, when the weather was supposed to be better.

This was the first Thanksgiving I didn't spend with my family, but I had loads of fun. We watched Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and O' Brother, Where Art Thou (sadly, Chuck wasn't there, so no tentacle porn) and played Apples to Apples (which I suck at). And since Shawn was cooking, it goes without saying that there was a TON of great food! Appetizers included shrimp, vegetable gyoza, cheese, crackers, grapes, candied ginger and orange peel. For dinner there was white bean and arugula soup, turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, candied sweet potatoes, peas, corn, biscuits, cranberry sauce, and green bean casserole. (And she dropped the lima beans with bacon, or there would have been that too.) For dessert, homemade pumpkin pie (courtesy of Trish, I believe), homemade whipped cream, candied oranges, pumpkin bread, banana bread (courtesy of Beagle), ginger cookies, and chocolate ganache balls (made from Scharffen Berger chocolate). All in all, a fun Thanksgiving with great friends and amazing food! And I still got to go up north Friday for leftovers with my family (there were plenty, my mom got a 17 lb. turkey).